Imagine
the world has been torn upside down and everything is falling apart right
before your eyes, and the only thing you can think of doing and protecting is
the person you love. The only problem is that person is a thousand miles away
and the collapse of society means that soon they’ll be no chance for you to
communicate and coordinate to ensure you’re safe. What would you do? Where would
you go? And how far would you go to find the person you love, even if you don’t
know if they’re alive or dead?

Set
during a viral outbreak that leaves humanity in ruins, Dead Weight is a film that not only dares to ask these questions,
but also answer them in the most twisted ways possible. The story follows
Charlie Russell (Joe Belknap); an average man who has spent the month since the
world fell apart in search for his girlfriend, Samantha (Mary Lindburg). Prior
to the outbreak, Charlie was living in Wisconsin while Samantha had taken a job
in Minneapolis, leaving them in a situation that must often be discussed by the
long-distance couples who fear the worst: “Where do I meet you if things fall
apart?”. Being a hopeless romantic, Charlie suggested to Samantha the last time
they talked to head for Wassau, as that is the town they met. In a nice nod to
another movie involving a couple waiting out a doomsday scenario, the
restaurant they intend to meet in is the “place that does all the fish”.

Driven
by his desire to see Samantha again, Charlie joined a group of survivors under
the deception that Wassau is a confirmed safe zone. As they draw closer to
their destination, Charlie must face adversity both from the hostile forces
outside of the group and the insidious whispers that plague his own thoughts,
picking away at his sanity. After all this time and pain, Charlie still has no
idea if she is safe, or if she even reached or was heading for Wassau at all.
The closer he comes to this place and the promise he constantly says it brings,
more is revealed about Charlie’s relationship not only with Samantha but with
his fellow survivors as well. Will the road lead Charlie to that which he has
pushed towards for so long, or will his dead weight pull him down?

Dead Weight is a brutal, stark character
piece that takes what most writers and directors would have made into an
optimistic, uplifting story about triumphing over adversity and the end of the
world and makes it something dark and twisted. Set in and filmed in the
creative team’s home state of Wisconsin, Dead
Weight has a bleak beauty in the survivor scenes, which were shot in
abandoned houses, empty barns, and vast tracks of snow-covered fields that lend
a sense of how alone the survivors are. By comparison, the flashbacks to
Charlie and Samantha’s relationship are bright, vibrant and full of life.
There’s a subtle beauty to the writing and film making, as demonstrated by a
very quick yet poignant conversation that manages to reveal all of a
character’s backstory in just a few lines that tell the audience everything
that needs to be heard without pushing it home too much. Dead Weight is all about the subtle cues, the faint glint in the
eyes, the understated reactions, and passing glances into a mind that begins to
unravel from stress and desire. Emotions and trusts are pulled tight and
stretched to the absolute limit, threatening to snap in the most explosive way
possible. Everything plays on and builds up in the minds of the characters, and
by extension the viewers until not a moment goes by when either has their guard
lowered.

This subtlety and
tension plays through in the way the flashbacks and main story interact and
coalesce. As Charlie gets closer to Wassau, his relationship with Samantha is
played out in reverse chronological order. In the hands of a more conventional
team, these scenes may have been played out as a romantic comedy where a quirky
guy meets a career-driven woman and they try to make a long-distance
relationship work, but the minds behind Dead
Weight are anything but conventional. Charlie is not a child-like layabout
who spends his days reading comic books and making pop culture references,
although he does enjoy reading comics on his days off. Rather, he is a man who
enjoys his personal status quo and does not like it when things are shaken up.
Samantha moves to Minneapolis for an internship, which visibly shakes him as it
would most people in a committed relationship, but when she offers to have him
move for her new job – and even promises him a guaranteed new job that is the
same as his one back in Wisconsin – Charlie’s reaction is that of a man who
likes to have things his way or not at all. The arguments are ones that
long-distant couples have had a thousand times before about where to find jobs
and where to move and how they will reunite if they have been separated for
prolonged periods of time. The flashbacks could very much be a movie in their
own right, for they are a much more real interpretation of a loving
relationship being threatened by external and internal forces.

Despite this being a
low-budget independent film, no expense was spared to create high-quality work.
The cinematography is excellent and as stated before, Wisconsin provides a
perfect beautiful yet bleak backdrop for a beautiful yet bleak story. All of
the scenes are tight and help to convey emotion. While there are instances of
line-reading, most of the dialogue feels very natural and those few moments
come from the bit actors who were really just regular people who still managed
to pull an above-average job. The leads and the named actors are great in their
roles, especially Joe Belknap as Charlie.

The music, composed by
Nicholas Elert, is appropriately haunting and helps to elevate the emotion in
every scene it comes into.

In a market glutton
with apocalypse movies that serve as little more than political platforms for a
director’s social agenda to a place where artsy filmmakers can try to show off
the coolest ways to mutilate a human corpse or thrust scenes of abuse and
obvious human indecencies upon the audience, Dead Weight manages to rise above the pack and become something new
and unique to the genre. While many of the scenes, especially later on, are
difficult to sit through and leave the audience with a feeling of discomfort,
there’s a very human element behind it and we’re left wondering if we would
make the same choices in such a scenario. This is a character piece through and
through, and one that has no qualms about going into the darker parts of the
human mind. It is stories like this one that elevate a genre above what is to
be expected and presents the viewer with something so basic that is becomes
profound in its simplicity.

Be warned however that
while there are scenes of violence, Dead
Weight is most definitely not one for people looking for another
celebration of blood, violence and gore. The dialogue-heavy nature of this film
may bore people who want to see infected being shot up and survivors being
devoured, but there are enough tense action scenes throughout to break up the discussions.
As said before, many of the later scenes are especially difficult to watch, but
in the end Dead Weight is worth the
price of admission and something that should have a place of honor in the
collection of any post-apocalypse collection.

Before my score, feel
free to watch the trailer:

Heroes – While I wouldn’t necessarily call Charlie
the “hero”, he is the most interesting protagonist I’ve seen in a while – 5/5

Villains – Rather subjective and to mention them
would be to give too much away. Suffice to say that a certain character could
be approached as the villain – 5/5

World – Wisconsin is both a beautiful and bleak
backdrop for this movie – 5/5

Cinematography – Tight, concise, and professional
grade – 5/5

Science/Magic – The viral threat is left undefined
and rather vague. In the special features, Adam Bartlett and John Pata both
make mention of their pages of detailed notes on the virus and how it spreads,
but none of it gets on the screen. It is more of an element than a focus – 3/5

Plot – A study in how what we want and need could
drive us to do some rather disturbing things – 5/5

Final Score – 4.5/5 – Well worth the price of
admission. The Tony Moore cover is beautiful and worth it if you feel like
spending the additional $5.

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About Me

Head of the creative team behind the Ghosts of Eternity roleplaying game and it's upcoming adaptations, Chris spends his free (and occupied) time working on new and existing stories. Never without pen or paper, Chris hopes to one day entertain people with his works. May as well start here. He also reviews for Fantasy-Faction.com.